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Down a few, rutted steps in the Dom Saint Maria in Augsburg you will find
its Crypt, which dates from the 10th century and is a remnant of an
earlier cathedral. It is a dark, low, vaulted space with numerous
short,
narrow columns supporting the space above. At one end is a small
altar in an alcove. The altar had two candles on it, and an
inset window of some diaphanous, stone-like material, emitted light
from what we assumed was an artificial source behind the wall. (The
crypt is slightly sunken and the day was overcast, so we think our
presumption about the light source is correct.) About to feet in front
of the altar is a brass plate in the floor commemorating Saint Simpert dated
778-807.
We took a photo of the altar and realized that it was to dark to do so
without a flash, but choose not to interrupt the solitude of the crypt by
doing so. Recently, we began processing the digital images of our
visit to the Dom and wanted to share a curious image of the altar. The
first image has been reduced and cropped but not enhanced in any way.
We use it to show you the general look of the altar to visitors.
Because we generally do not use full size images on our website, we need to
reduce and crop them to conserve page space and bandwidth. When we
began to look at the pictures - we noticed something that we had not seen
during our visit.
We sometimes use a commercial image processing package to enhance the images
that did not turn out quite as we had expected when we snapped them.
Shown below is the use of the "Enhance Photo" tool available in Paint Shop
Pro X. As you can see, it lightened the image, but seemed to include
several artifacts. Upon closer look, the white walls seemed to contain
images.
The image below is a 50% reduction of the "enhanced" original. In it,
we have circled what appears to be two faces attached to rather bulbous
bodies. The image on the right appears to be the face of a man gazing
up or across the alcove. We "see" (from left to right within the blue
circle) a forehead, eye socket, hair, and an irregularly shaped ear.
The image on the left has a cow or bull-like facial appearance (some say
rabbit).
If you take a look at this same figure in the original at the top of the
page, you might "see" that the figure on the left could be a semi-bald
man, perhaps a monk. However, that was not the end of it.
We reduced the image further (no other processing was used) and now it
appeared that the face we thought we had seen in the image on the
right-side was possibly a part of a larger head and face looking to the
right or away from the altar . Further, the image on the left now
resembled a man looking down at the altar. If you continue to look,
you may see other details, or perhaps we are just too imaginative.
However, we thought you might be interested. (All images copyright
ThereArePlaces, 2009)
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